Board of Directors

Bill Whitaker (Chair):

Bill has been involved throughout his life in community efforts intended to foster social justice. His work has focused on poverty, hunger and food security. For 10 years Bill was a community organizer at South Side Settlement, an interracial progressive social agency in Columbus, Ohio, where he worked with neighbors on human rights such as welfare, housing, neighborhood preservation, employment and education. He helped organize the Ohio Steering Committee for Adequate Welfare and the Ohio Walk for Decent Welfare which resulted in the founding of the National Welfare Rights Organization. For thirty years Bill practiced and taught community organization and social welfare policy practice with an emphasis on rural communities in the United States and throughout the world. While teaching he organized the Wyoming Coalition for WIC, conducted a state-wide study of childhood hunger in Maine, organized the Maine Coalition for Food Security, chaired the State of Maine Blue Ribbon Commission on Childhood Hunger, helped organize the Idaho Interfaith Roundtable Against Hunger, and was president of the board of United Vision for Idaho. He is a board member of the Oregon Rural Organizing Project. Bill is a satisfied participant in Medicare and Social Security. His passions include his family and grandchildren Fiona and Max, gardening, Oregon Rural Action local food and energy initiatives, hunger and food policy, climate change/global warming, and healthcare reform. Bill lives in La Grande with his wife Cheryl.

Mabel Dobbs (Treasurer)

Mabel grew up in a small rural community in Northeastern, Oklahoma and has two daughters and a son as well as six wonderful grandkids.  Mabel has had a long career in commercial banking and real estate lending.  In 1984, Mabel met and married a lifelong Idaho rancher Grant and has lived in Snake River country ever since.  She has been a long-time member of the Idaho Rural Council and has been active in WORC working to protect family farms and ranches and currently serves as the Chair of WORC’s Livestock Committee. 

Steve Bartell (Blue Mountain Chapter Representative):

Steve worked for 15 years as a researcher and engineer for the Aerospace industry before moving to the Grande Ronde Valley.  For the last 9 years he has been a rancher and timber manager and also owns and operates Mr. Bubbles Laundry.  He and his wife Tempi have three children.  Steve is passionate about clean, renewable energy and is the Blue Mountain Representative.

Juanita Lassiter (Snake River Representative):

Juanita was born in Texas and is the oldest of 14 children.  She has been married 40 years to an Ontario, Oregon native and has 4 children.  Her dad was a farmer and she has enjoyed gardening her entire life. Juanita has extensive volunteer experience.  For example, she is a court appointed children’s advocate, board member of the Nyssa Chamber of Commerce, and an active volunteer for Help Them to Hope, local food pantries, Toys for Tots, Make a Wish Foundation, and Children’s Miracle Network.

Cori Brewster (At-Large):

Cori Brewster first joined Oregon Rural Action as a member of the Snake River chapter in Ontario and moved to La Grande after finishing her PhD in Rhetoric and Composition at Washington State University. Her dissertation entitled “Race, Rhetoric, and the Rural: Critical Populism and Community Organizing” exemplifies her interest in rural communities and community organizing. She teaches English at Eastern Oregon University. Cori has served on the board previously as an at-large member and Vice-Chair from 2007 to 2009.

Alma Wolf (At-Large):

Alma was born in Mission Texas and at 13 settled in the Snake River Region.  She is the oldest of eleven children.  Her husband Dan was raised around Payette and Alma and Dan raised 6 children while Dan, with Alma’s assistance worked as a Thoroughbred trainer and jockey.  Alma worked for nearly 40 years at OreIda with 21 consecutive years during the night shift while raising her children by day.  Now that she is retired, she enjoys time with their 9 grandchildren and enjoys crafts, gardening, learning more about healthy food, reading, taking keyboard lessons, and fundraising for community efforts.

Ramon Lara (At-Large):

Ramon was born and raised in Eastern Oregon where he worked many years for the Forest Service and as a site manager for the Nature Conservancy.  He is married with five children and 10 grandchildren.  Ramon is an involved member of the Baker Food Cooperative and is on the Baker City Farmers Market Board of Directors. His hobbies include vegetable gardening, house remodeling, wood working/carpentry, hunting, and fishing.  Ramon has served as Vice-Chair from 2009 to 2010 and as Chair until 2011.

Bob Hanson (At-Large):

Bob was born in the Treasure Valley on the Idaho side of the border and was raised on the Oregon side in Malheur County. He graduated from BYU with a degree in Agricultural Business with a minor in Range management. Bob spent the first twenty years of his career working in the farm/ranch business. He recently retired after another twenty years of operations management and safety initiatives at Ore – Ida (a wholly owned subsidiary of Heinz Frozen Foods, Inc). Food production and food processing has been at the fore front of his life. Bob is involved in provident living, self sufficiency,  genealogy, and the eco–social landscape. In other words, as we strive to be self sufficient/self sustaining we continue to try to positively influence our neighbors and community. Bob has been a volunteer as a family history consultant and is a local employment coordinator. He works at supporting the local four rivers community garden which assists the food bank with fresh vegetables.   He got involved with Oregon Rural Action because of their mission to enhance community, county, and state-wide activities for rural agriculture.

Peter Maille (Member, BMC):

Peter was born and raised in Erie, Pennsylvania.  After earning an Associate’s Degree in Forestry he worked with Senegalese peanut farmers as a tree-planting Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal, West Africa.  After Peace Corp service, Peter returned to school where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Resources Management, and Master’s in Forestry.  Along with these degrees he secured his wife, Robin, and they proceeded to work for the Federal Government in Washington DC, and later, for themselves as owners and operators of a rural eco-friendly B&B in West Virginia.  To help pay the bills, Robin took a job as a high school science teacher and Peter as the Education Program Coordinator for a regional science-based watershed conservation non-profit, The Cacapon Institute.  Peter’s other non-profit experience includes working with and for World Wildlife Fund, and The Lightstone Foundation—a group dedicated to promoting rural livelihoods in West Virginia.  As interesting as this was, after about 7 years and 2 kids the family moved to Morgantown West Virginia where Peter got his PhD in Natural Resource Economics.  His fields of study were environmental economics, and development economics.  This allowed him to conduct field research on economic incentives to control farm runoff in a way that increases farmer choices and profitability.  Eastern Oregon University was looking for someone with his background at just the right time, and Peter is now an assistant professor of economics in La Grande.  His current courses include the Economics of Social Issues, Principles of Microeconomics, the Economics of Development, and Environmental Economics.  When not brow-beating his students, he is often fishing the rivers and reservoirs of northeast Oregon.

Rob Cordtz (At-Large):